What role does a leader play to nurture innovation? What measures can he take to not let an idea die? How should leaders tackle the conflict between 'work at hand' and 'work for future'? Read Mr. Anup Sable's article in Sampada, our monthly publication - January edition.

1. 39: OmZodmar 2019
HOW TO FOSTER INNOVATION
THE LEADER'S ROLE
Anup Sable
A lot has been said on the subject of
innovation in the past and I am sure it will
be discussed more in the future. I would
like to avoid getting into the basics of
what innovation is or what is the
semantic difference between the terms
“invention” and “innovation”. Nor will I
address the issue of how to go about
creating innovative ideas. We will
instead focus on the understated role of
the leader who nurtures innovation so
that it is successful. However, I cannot
ignore one ultimate reality of innovation,
that an innovation is the one that is
successful in the market.
I remember the time when a very
capable solution architect in my team
walked up to me and said that he wanted
to show me something that was
interesting. I kept on delaying meeting
him for “obvious important reasons”,
subjecting him through the cliché of “not
having a time slot” because of
“scheduled meetings”. Finally, through
his tenacious followup, I relented and
agreed for a demo. To my surprise it was
a software solution to a problem and it
was both elegant and simple. The
concept was almost ready to be
converted into a product. We then
hurried up and set up a small team to
work with him and developed it into a
full-fledged solution that is now sitting
inside thousands of cars.
I could have killed the product at the
inception itself by not giving it enough
time and attention and I admit, I did not
spend much time - maybe 10 minutes,
before he convinced me that it is indeed
something worth taking forward. This
taught me a very big lesson about
finding time to listen to people.I also had
a revelation that the concept of sitting
inside the cabin creates this culture
which is a killer for discussing ideas that
spring up randomly and need a quick
catch. If only I could have created a habit
of doing this multiple times in a day, I
could have facilitated creation of many
more ideas.
Ideas can be killed in multiple ways
though. Sometimes the engineering of
an idea into a product can frustrate the
innovator of the idea. I started running a
weekly meeting for a very complex
product that posed a constant friction
between two sets of a multi-disciplinary
team. It took me some time and
empathy to understand which two
factions are in continuous brawl with
each other. In the two groups of people
involved in arm wrestling, the first had
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2. : OmZodmar 201940
created the idea and the second was
tasked to convert it into a tangible
product. Both wanted the idea to
succeed but the approaches were
diametrically opposite. The creator of
the idea was all about how the idea
worked and excited about the solution
whereas the analytical engineers
assigned to transform it into a product
were all about the problems, what will
not work, what are the risks, and the
time, efforts and money needed to fix it.
Both the teams were performing their
roles for the betterment of the product
and yet they were in conflict and had
moved away from each other. As a
result, the product was suffering. We set
up a weekly meeting to help the team
get together regularly. With a bit of
lobbying with each faction about how
the other group was “maybe” correct in
their approach and how
it was “necessary" for
the product to be
established in the
market, we managed to
c r e a t e a t e a m
e n v i r o n m e n t w i t h
acknowledgement of
each other's attributes
which accelerated the
product development.
Common tools for
communication, defect
management and a
process to manage the
change, of course,
added to the smooth
functioning of the team.
One more way an idea can get killed
at the inception stage is by asking the
technical people to present the idea to
the management. More often than not,
some good thinkers and solution finders
may not be good presenters and the
experience of presenting the idea to the
management is usually frustrating to
them. Answers to some problems many
a times lie in the uncomfortable zone of
intuition ; and intuition, by nature, is very
difficult to present to someone who is
very objective. We had this experience
once when one of our brightest
engineers solved a problem on a hunch,
created a prototype, and proved his
hunch only to be successfully frustrated
later, by an engineer from customer
side, who put some basic theory on
paper and proved that the concept won't
work, even though the experiment was
showing positive results. We scrapped
that project.
Often I see the conflict between
“work at hand” and “work necessary for
the future”. This could be a very
notorious innovation-killer.We all know
that the business is governed by the
performance of quarter on quarter
metrics; there is no denying that reality.
But a sustainable business will have to
absorb the shocks of change in the
marketplace, in technology, in business
models and in customers' thinking.
Innovation will be necessary to adapt to
these changes and getting it to market is
a mid-term to long-term pursuit at best. It
cannot necessarily earn quick returns in
most cases. This conflict of priorities of
today and tomorrow can suck resources
from tomorrow into today and hurt the
innovation process. The obvious
solution seems to be to separate the
teams that address the opportunities of
today and tomorrow. But that has an
inherent problem. If you create walls
between the teams of today and
tomorrow with a structure, the teams of
tomorrow will lose one of the most
important ingredients required for
problem-identification, “interaction with
the customer and the market”. One
solution we found out was to create a
process and forum which mingles the
teams together to share the information
and address this problem.
Innovators are passionate about
their ideas. Though an ideal innovator
should be persistent and should be able
to take criticism positively, we don't
always come across ideal people. The
leader's role is to fix the problem by
observing and managing people to
resist the suppression of new ideas.
Sometimes good people are high on
talent but lack people skills, the leaders
should make sure that such people get
recognised for their talent and don't get
butchered for the absence of people
skills. The leader has to avoid the
temptation of being consultative, and
instead be in the questioning mode,
forcing the innovator to explore and
think. That would create a positive
ownership of the issues in the mind of
the innovator. The leader needs to be a
bridge between the innovator, the
e n g i n e e r i n g t e a m s a n d t h e
management, providing support and
resources to help fill the gaps and take
the idea successfully to the market.
L e a d e r s h i p i n
innovation is all about
e d u c a t i n g a n d
motivating the team to
see what the other
person's role is and
helping develop an
ability in the team to
appreciate the other
roles and talents rather
than getting frustrated
about why the person is
not a mirror image of
o n e s e l f . O n e
observation made has
been that most of the
productive discussions
for new ideas and their
development happen during relaxed
activities like tea and coffee breaks. A
good leader should create informal
settings as well as forums, and facilitate
a frictionless atmosphere conducive for
free thinking.
I believe that a leader plays a pivotal
role in fostering innovation inside an
organisation. An organisation focusing
on innovation should not only have a
good process for creating innovative
ideas but also create a good leadership
pipeline that nurtures the innovation to
take it to the market.
----------------------------------------------------
Anup Sable – Chief Technology Officer,
KPIT Technologies Ltd.
Email : anup.sable@kpit.com
www.youtube.com/user/punemccia